UMaine’s New Seismometer Up and Running

Contacts: Alice Kelley (207) 581-2056; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777

The University of Maine is reporting all kinds of shakes, rattles, and rolls, but it’s not just from the students returning to campus for the fall semester – it’s movements and vibrations of the Earth occurring worldwide that are being picked up by UMaine’s new seismometer.

Last year, Dan Phillips and Austin Johnson (pictured), both senior Department of Earth Sciences majors at the time, played a major role in the installation of a seismometer on campus.

With some assistance from experts at Boston College – home of the Weston Observatory – and UMaine Earth Sciences Instructor Alice Kelley, they were successful and the seismometer now is connected to the World-Wide Standardized Seismic Network.

The director of the Weston Observatory, Dr. John Ebel, is scheduled to speak at UMaine at noon, Friday, Sept. 18, in room 100 of the Bryand Global Sciences Center. He’ll be discussing “Earthquakes in the Northeastern U.S. and Implications for the Seismic Hazard in Maine.”

The event is open to the public, and Kelley and Phillips also will be available to answer questions about UMaine’s seismometer.

UMaine’s device is located in the basement of Somerset Hall, a dormitory in the Hilltop area of campus, and just weeks after being installed had picked up two sizeable earthquakes. The first was in the South Sandwich Islands, and the other in a cluste of islands off Russia’s coast. Although placed in a usually quiet spot on campus, move-in day at the dorm resulted in extra vibrations…a source of consternation until the cause was recognized.

“Every time something happens, I go on the U.S.G.S. website to correlate,” says Phillips. He has graduated, but continues to work on the project. “It’s a really good teaching tool.”